We need to use the logic of shelf e-commerce to create Xiaohongshu

In today's digital marketing, Xiaohongshu, as a platform that integrates community and e-commerce, has become a marketing position that brands and businesses cannot ignore. To stand out on this fiercely competitive platform, you need to deeply understand its unique marketing logic and user behavior.

1. Xiaohongshu is actually a kind of "shelf e-commerce"

Xiaohongshu itself is a consumer decision-making platform. Search is a prerequisite for purchase and has a great impact on conversion. It is essentially a shelf e-commerce. When users search, they will also search for various products, but not the product details page, but the product recommendation content.

On shelf e-commerce platforms, the search ranking of keywords is highly uncertain. Title/price/sales volume/evaluation, etc. may all be influencing factors. However, on Xiaohongshu, there are not many influencing factors. Relatively speaking, there is a greater chance of common searches.

Therefore, how to make their content easier to search has become a necessary task for merchants on Xiaohongshu.

Factors that can influence Xiaohongshu’s search rankings are actually already reflected on the search page.

It is nothing more than "latest" and "hottest". As long as the notes do not violate the rules and are normally included, the newer the notes, the more likely they are to be hit by "latest". Notes older than two months will not appear in the "latest" range. Notes with high interaction rates, especially high comment rates, and low followers and high interactions are more likely to be hit by "hottest".

In most cases, there are still too few high-placement notes that are both new and popular, unless they are particularly niche or relatively long-tail words, so in fact everyone’s grass-planting content is not much different, which is also a good opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses.

The solution for merchants with small budgets can be "content flow", which means continuously publishing the "latest" related notes, giving different notes more opportunities to be retrieved; the solution for merchants with sufficient budgets is "search placeholder", which means directly using information flow to lock notes in high positions for specified keywords through bidding.

The former is more like the optimization of product titles, while the latter is more like a through train.

2. Xiaohongshu’s search chain is longer, but it can still be divided into stages

Search is not just an opportunity to convert core groups of people, it also contains some category opportunities.

The search terms are completely different at different stages. For example, if I want to buy a piece of clothing suitable for outdoor sports, the user’s first search term may not be “jacket” or “quick-drying clothes”, but “clothes suitable for outdoor sports”.

The search method of Xiaohongshu users is more like a "funnel". They will first use general search and then specific search to gradually narrow the scope of the search and obtain accurate search results.

At different search stages, different contents may be provided for users to search.

The first category is "interested general users" with potential consumption intentions.

The key thing that brands need to do to attract and convert these users is to combine the recommendation tools provided by the Juguan platform to expand the keywords of potential intention words and upstream and downstream recommended words, so as to tap into more incremental value of the original keywords.

Through potential intention and upstream and downstream keyword optimization, users who originally did not have direct demand scenarios can be captured. For example, users want to see outfits, but have no requirements for skirts or pants, and brands can directly push the product "yoga clothes" combined with outfits to this group of people through spotlighting. The original search path required "outfit-sports style-yoga clothes", the brand directly displays the consumption scenario and the product's outfit effect to users through upstream keywords, which reduces the user's original search path and improves the brand's conversion path.

For example: For general users who have the consumption demand scenario of "What should I wear when playing badminton?" for sportswear and footwear brands, we can use keywords such as "yoga clothes", "badminton", etc. to introduce brand products to users in combination with demand scenarios, and then focus on expanding upstream keywords such as "spring outfit" and "sports outfit" to position the search, successfully retaining users who are interested in yoga clothes in outfits, injecting the brand word "BYYOURSIDE around", and directly introducing the traffic of these users to promote the brand.

The second category is the brand’s “high potential users”, most of whom already have relevant needs.

Users who have been successfully attracted by brand-related promotions have even searched for brands and categories, but have not yet successfully converted to consumption. Some of these users are struggling among competing products, while others are hesitant about prices. Therefore, when planning search promotions, we can use keywords such as "category words, scene words, and component words" to strengthen promotion for these users in combination with scenarios and functions.

For example, for mother and baby users who have a problem with "babies wearing diapers have stuffy butts", brands can optimize keywords by combining category words, scene words, and component words. For users who are struggling with competing products, we can combine keywords such as "red butts" and "pull-up pants" to push usage scenarios where babies may have red butts when wearing diapers to users, showing the product's refreshing and breathable selling point. For users who are hesitant about the price, we can also use keywords such as "pull-up pants are affordable" and "save money" to attract users.

The third category is our "brand core users".

Generally, they search for brands and related products directly on Xiaohongshu. Many of these users are "returning customers" who have already purchased and used brand products, and many are new customers attracted by the brand effect. This type of users has a strong stickiness to the brand and does not need ordinary seeding. Therefore, brands can accurately match them by promoting brand words and product words.

For example, users who search for target luxury brands on Xiaohongshu are customers who already know the brand and have strong demand, and they choose to buy products of the target brand by searching. This type of precise search user is the direct target user that brands need to capture when doing keyword promotion on the Xiaohongshu search page.

above.